The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (65 page)

Muscle
—Underworld thugs. (Note, yes, I am considered muscle to the Borgata. I like to think I’m top-shelf muscle, but really, muscle is muscle. Do you really care if it’s top-shelf muscle kicking your face in?)

Omertà
—Omertà is more than a code of silence. It’s an attitude. It revolves around strict noncooperation with law enforcement and protecting the secrecy of the organization. Once you take the Omertá oath, you turn your back on the idea of any help outside the organization. Whatever problem you have has to be handled inside Cosa Nostra. You’re a citizen of Cosa Nostra and answer only to their laws. Forever. Endgame. (Do I believe in the oath? I fucking took it. Of course I believe in it. I don’t love the establishment, but fuck the government. Motherfuckers hound my brother every step he takes. I’d rot in federal forever before I’d flip on the Borgata.)

On the pad
—An officer of the law enforcement who is being paid to ignore certain criminal activity.

Oobatz
—Crazy. (Note, this is another one of those Italian words that was latched on to by New York Italians. I mean, can’t really give anyone shit about it. I use it as much as the next wiseguy.)

Oxy
—Oxycodone. Also known as Percocet. A prime prescription painkiller, much better than Vicodin with a high street value. Long term use of oxy will fuck you up. After a while, you’ll need them to feel normal, so you’ll end up taking more for the high until you’re literally swallowing fistfuls of pills. Withdrawal is a motherfucker, though I don’t think I ever fully crashed off oxy. I moved on to blow, because oxy is a hardcore gateway drug. I
have
crashed off blow and though I wouldn’t say it was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, I’d put it in the highly unpleasant category. Considering the shit I’ve gone through, chances are, unless you know what it’s like to be chained in a basement for three days with no water and a bullet in your thigh—you should skip the oxy habit and the blow. My unpleasant is your living nightmare.

Poppers
—Amyl nitrate. Legal in most countries, though usually marketed differently from their intended use. Poppers are favored by gay men because they relax your body for a short time to make anal sex easier and more comfortable. Girls in the underground sex market use them too. Poppers also give you a brief head rush, which when mixed with ecstasy can make the high more intense for about thirty seconds, but it feels like longer. Not recommended. Nova was fuck crazy to mix them. At twenty-four, I wouldn’t have let him do it. I’d lay him out first, but I wasn’t exactly clearheaded at that point in my life either.

Rolling
—Rolling is the term used for the high off ecstasy. Everyone is always waiting for the roll. Planning for the roll. Ecstasy users are very serious about the roll and usually spend their whole day getting ready for it since ecstasy isn’t one of those drugs someone snorts every hour like blow. Ecstasy is an event, not a lifestyle.

Smack
—Heroin. (Never used it. There are levels of drug use, and heroin, in my opinion, is extreme. It wrecks you like meth. A horrible, nasty drug, and my people don’t sell it because of that.)

Soldiers
—Entry-level position for made men in the mafia. Also known as button men, because if a capo presses a button, they better jump to do what he says.

Straight
—A term used for a gangster who decides to step away from crime and be law-abiding. This rarely works out. I went straight for three fucking years, but it just never lasts, for any of us.

Stugots
—American Italian slang for balls. I think it originally stems from the term
stu cazzo
, which means this dick in Italian. Not totally sure, but stugots means balls now, and it’s used in lots of different ways. I guess American Italians didn’t have enough swearwords revolving around cocks and balls and made up an extra one. Figures.

War
—A mafia war. Never a good thing, but inevitable.

WASP princess
—This is sort of a snarky term. WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. A WASP princess is one of those preppy, polished girls from high school you kinda wanted to fuck, even knowing they’d ignore you the next day rather than be seen in public with you. WASP princesses eventually grow up to drive BMWs and decorate their four-bedroom houses in the suburbs. Then they’ll have more little WASP princesses that they take to dance classes and groom to be the next generation of wine-drinking, pumpkin-candle-buying queens of suburbia.

Whack
—To kill. (Note, we have a lot of words for this. The ones in this dictionary don’t even scratch the surface.)

Wiseguys
—Another term for a made man. If you’re made, you’re a wiseguy.

Zips
—Zip is another term for a Sicilian gangster. It’s a term the Italian Americans gave to the Sicilians who got off the boat because their Italian was so quick. Short and fast with a lot of slang they didn’t understand. Could also be tied to the zip gun, which, wow. Old school. I’m telling you, when you got history like Cosa Nostra does, sometimes it’s hard to let go of these things. Nova likes the term
suburban zips
, which is an insult in Nova’s world. In case you didn’t notice, Nova has a hang-up about people from the suburbs. You can take the genius out of the ghetto, but when he doesn’t forget shit, it’s hard to take the ghetto out of the genius. There used to be a time when Nova wanted a house and a yard with a dog to go with it, but he doesn’t know I remember it.

Zu
—Another term for uncle, but it’s used in mafia circles as a title of honor. Usually, the capo bastone and the consigliere of an organization will be referred to as zu in the same way a godfather is don. A man of power in the family. They aren’t the head of the Borgata, but they are the right- and left-hand men to the don. Sometimes the title zu is spoken in fear, like it was with Frankie. Other times it’s said with respect like I often hear with Nova. Either way, if someone earned the title of zu, you should probably honor it and say it. Forgetting is an insult you don’t want to dish out.

Loose Id Titles by Kele Moon

Packing Heat

Starfish and Coffee

The Queen’s Consort

* * * *

The BATTERED HEARTS Series

Defying the Odds

Star-Crossed

Crossing the Line

* * * *

The UNTAMED HEARTS Series

The Viper

The Slayer

The Enforcer

Kele Moon

A freckle-faced redhead born and raised in Hawaii, Kele Moon has always been a bit of a sore thumb and has come to enjoy the novelty of it. She thrives on pushing the envelope and finding ways to make the impossible work in her storytelling. With a mad passion for romance, she adores the art of falling in love. The only rule she believes in is that, in love, there are no rules and true love knows no bounds.

So obsessed is she with the beauty of romance and the novelty of creating it, she’s lost in her own wonder world most of the time. Thankfully she married her own dark, handsome, brooding hero who has infinite patience for her airy ways, and attempts to keep her grounded. When she leaves her keys in the refrigerator or her cell phone in the oven, he’s usually there to save her from herself. The two of them now reside in Florida with their three beautiful children, who make their lives both fun and challenging in equal parts—they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Read more about Kele and her books at
http://www.kelemoon.com
.